Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Fostering a Love of Reading

I have always believed that if you teach your children to love books, you have already done half the work in teaching them to read. The best way, if not the only way to teach children to love books, is to love them yourself.
When I was four years old, more than anything else, I wanted to learn to read. The reason wasn't because I was a little budding intellectual, (which I wasn't) but because I saw my parents and older siblings reading and loving it. Every night my two oldest siblings would read some from whatever book they were on, and I just couldn't wait to do the same. When I finally achieved enough reading prowess to be able to read Don and Peggy, I read a "chapter" of it every night to my self. I wasn't able to read silently yet, so I would whisper as quietly as I could just so that I could be like the people I looked up to.
I will never forget the pure enjoyment my father expressed when reading books like Winnie the Pooh to us. He always laughed so hard at the funny parts, that I couldn't understand what he was reading, but it didn't matter. And no one can do "voices" better than Daddy. My mother would read more "school like" books to us, but I always enjoyed these too. When I was about six, Mama read War and Peace to my older siblings; since I was too young to really understand it, I wasn't required to listen, but I did anyway. A lot of it was over my head, but I liked listening to her read. When I read War and Peace to my self, I was surprised at how much I remembered almost word for word, thirteen years later!
I started reading Anna a bed time story every night when she was two,and it soon got to be where she wouldn't go to sleep unless I read to her for bed time and nap time. I love reading to her, and snuggling up in bed with a book and your child is the best thing there is. Even when Anna was going through her Green Eggs and Ham stage. I read that book two times a day, every day for weeks!

The twins are starting to get really into books now. It wont be long before they want to have a bedtime story. The only problem with reading to two one year olds, is that they fight over who gets to turn the pages, and with two babies turning the pages, the book gets read really fast!

1 comment:

I love this post! It seems like when you write something I can identify with it immediately! Lol, 2 nights ago I started having Elisa read 30 min "to Lucia" and then daddy would read to her 1 chapter of Charlotte's Web (2 more to go). Anyhow, Lucia sat there for parts of it, but mostly it was Elisa and I laughing to the book Caps for Sale which she wanted to keep reading till the end of the book, so she finished it that same night. I was really impressed because it was the first book she had officially read other than a few book pages here and there or just books with very short sentences. I'm just loving homeschooling and loving books as I teach Elisa! I really need to make sure to take pics of everything because when something is worth taking a pic of I don't want to get up and get the cam. and then I'm looking for stuff to take pics of but it's just not the same. :S lol